IL 170823 Paid on line, lapsed anyway but published for restoration

Daoud Fried received a patent on 1st October 2011 and claims to have paid the renewal for IL 170823 on 15 November 2011. He queried when the next renewal was due in July 2013, and discovered that the patent was considered lapsed from 1st January 2012. Apparently he did not send the receipt to the patent office. However he immediately took steps to revive the patent, and filed a request to revive the patent on 7 August 2013. Ms Jaqueline Bracha considered that since he didn’t intend the patent to lapse and took immediate steps to revive it, she would allow the request and ordered that it be published for opposition purposes.

COMMENT

A couple of months ago, it transpired that an Israel Company called Share-Management Data Actualization Technologies LTD. had made exactly the same mistake. See here. It seems that there are a number of patentees who make the not unreasonable assumption that if they pay the renewal fee on line on the patent office website, inserting their details and details of the patent being renewed, that there is no need for further action. Indeed, in the US, payments made on the USPTO website do not need further actions. In Israel, however, it is required to print out the proof of payment and submit it by hand or by (snail) mail to the Israel Patent Office. This is not clear from the Israel Patent Office website and is arguably counter-intuitive.

We understand that Reinhold Cohn (RCIP) is appealing the previous decision concerning IL 128935 to Share-Management Data Actualization Technologies LTD. to the courts. There Ms Bracha rejected the patentee’s request to correct the register since the payment was timely made, although proof of payment wasn’t hand delivered.

In the meantime, we wonder why the patent office doesn’t at least post a warning on its website that receipts for payments made on line have to be printed out and hand delivered?

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